On August 19, 1992, Brett Boone was a part of history. When he made his major league debut with the Seattle Mariners, his family became the first ever to have three generations of men play Major League Baseball. His grandfather Ray played 13 years, his dad Bob played for 19 years, and ultimately his brother Aaron joined the party, completing a 13-year playing career. This, in many ways, is the first family of baseball. Two of the Boones, Bob and Aaron, have gone on to have successful managerial careers, and now a third has entered the ranks of coaching.
Brett Boone was hired by the Rangers in early May to cure an ailing offense. The hitting has been anemic since, well, since they won the World Series in November of 2023. The Rangers fired Donnie Ecker, who built this offense into championship caliber, but could not heal the offense. In comes Boone to try his hand. Ecker’s approach to coaching was deep and thought-provoking. Boone’s is basic and simple. His mantra is see ball hit ball.
Of course, if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it, and no one knows that better than Brett. During his playing career, he was a four-time All-Star and a two-time Silver Slugger Award winner. He led the American League in RBI in 2001. That year, he was a part of a Mariners team that tied an MLB record with 116 wins. The heart and soul of that team was Hall of Famer Edgar Martinez.
“Edgar was my mentor in the second half of my career,” Boone animatedly said during a recent on-field interview. “My approach to coaching follows what he has done in Seattle.”
Every conversation Boone has is rather animated. He loves to talk, he loves to talk baseball, he wants his team to talk baseball. “I want these guys out here standing around the cage, giving each other grief and talking about that night’s pitcher,” Boone said.
You see, that is the way they did it when he was playing baseball. He and Edgar and Mark McLemore and Alex Rodriguez and Jay Buhner were among the many on that team who talked about every possible situation that might occur before and during the game. Brett is trying to encourage conversation in the dugout as well. “I know there is value in these guys grabbing an iPad and studying their at-bats, but I want them to watch the game,” Boone said.
It sounds pretty basic, doesn’t it? Watch the game. But the truth is, with modern technology and the ability to study each at-bat, players today are inclined to spend more time watching the screen to determine what they did right or wrong than watching the game.
During the first week of his tenure as the Rangers’ hitting instructor, the team went on a run where the record was 6-1. Brett was quick to point out to anyone who would listen, “I had almost nothing to do with that.” Not long after, the team hit a rough patch where they went 1-6 and were saying the same thing, “I had almost nothing to do with that.”
He spent the first month of his tenure talking to the players, getting to know them, learning what makes them tick. He says the best hitting coaches he had when he was a player were more psychologist than hitting tactician. The reality is that everyone who makes it to the major leagues is uber talented. Most of them have hit well at every level of baseball. All of them can hit. But can they go to the plate with confidence? Can they move the runner over? Can they shorten up their swing and go with the pitch? Can they recognize what needs to be done at that moment in the game? Ron Washington said it so simply and so eloquently, can they “Do what the game asks them to do?”
Like Boone, the game is always talking. Always sending messages. A member of the first family of baseball is simply asking these guys to listen to the game, listen to each other, talk to each other, and let the hitting take care of itself. It sounds simple, but Boone knows that it works. It worked in his day, and under the guidance of Edgar Martinez in Seattle, it is working for the Mariners today.
Brett says that in becoming a coach, it is like he adopted 13 children. Like all parents, he wants success for each of them. So he will continue to encourage them, cajole them, listen to them, and talk to them. He knows that this simple approach can yield tremendous results.
